Chinese economic development of East Turkestan aims to disinherit Muslims

By M A Shaikh

Beijing’s much-trumpeted economic project for the development of occupied East Turkestan (officially Xinjiang province), published last month, is meticulously designed to disinherit Muslims and replace them with Han Chinese and selected members of other ethnic groups, most of them Muslim, who are accepted as ‘loyal’ by the authorities. The project — which not only borrows heavily from the experience of the zionists, but is drawn up with advice from Israeli specialists — aims to defeat East Turkestan’s struggle for independence and an Islamic identity.

The project is part of a wider plan called ‘Western Big Development’, which involves billions of dollars and covers the provinces of western China, including Tibet, another scene of unrest in recent years. The nine provinces and autonomous regions constitute more than half of China and contain most of its oil and mineral reserves. They also account for the greater part of the country’s strategic installations and nearly all of its disaffected minority regions. It is no accident that East Turkestan and Tibet are said to be the linchpins of the big plan: the two are the most restive areas of all China.

Of all China’s restless frontier lands, East Turkestan is both the most militant and troublesome, and has suffered the greatest reppression over the years. The Chinese military is engaged in operations against a on-going jihad effort.

The ‘Western Big Development’ plan includes the construction of roads, airports, railroads and a $14 billion pipeline linking East Turkestan’s natural gas-fields to Shanghai, 4,000 kilometres (2,500 miles) to the south-east. President Jiang Zemin, no less, was recently forced to admit that the main purpose of the plan was to strengthen China’s stability (code for pacification of the Muslim province) and to maintain the communist party’s grip on the targeted area. Predictably, Zemin added that the "revitalisation of the Chinese people" was also a principle objective.

But the plan is clearly more a security scheme than an economic development project. Even Chinese scholars are on record as comparing it to the taming of America’s ‘wild west’. Beijing’s crackdown on Islamic activists has certain parallels with the way the indigenous populations of the ‘wild west’ were treated. The ‘Western Big Development’ does not overtly seek to wipe out the whole Muslim population of East Turkestan, as white settlers eliminated America’s indigenous "Indian" population whose lands they usurped, but there are other ways of disinheriting a people.

The central plank of the project for the Muslim province is to reduce the 8 million Turkic-speaking Uighurs, who form the largest group, to an impoverished minority by the settlement of more Han Chinese there. The Han are already the dominant group in terms of economic and political power, although the Muslim Uighur outnumber them by some 1.2 million. The rest of East Turkestan’s 16 million population are made up of several minority groups, including the Kazakhs and Hui (Chinese Muslims). These small groups are mostly Muslim and, together with the more numerous Uighurs, help make Muslims the province’s overwhelming majority. This probably explains why Beijing approached the Israelis for advice on how to settle the region, and why the Israelis, drawing on their experience of occupying and settling Palestine, helped to design the project.

China has, of course, long been trying to alter the demographic balance of the province by settling hundreds of thousands of Han Chinese there at regular intervals, and by opening up millions of hectares of desert for farming, in order to encourage them. Since the early 1950s, the authorities have moved 2.4 million people, 90 percent of them Han, into East Turkestan. In 1948, 75 percent of its population were Uighur, while 15 percent were Han; now 40 percent are Han. The pace of Han migration has accelerated because of intense official pressure since the 1990 census, which showed Han numbers to be decreasing rather than growing. As a result, 250,000 Han Chinese are estimated to have moved into the region annually in recent years.

The new project is also designed to reinforce the monopoly of economic and political power enjoyed by the Han Chinese and a tiny number of ‘loyal’ Muslims. The authorities are determined to exploit the fact that non-Uighur Muslims may not necessarily support the Uighur-based Islamic resistance. Beijing is hoping that the central Asian countries’ support for China against the Islamic separatists and ‘terrorists’ will influence the loyalties of Muslims of other ethnic groups.

In addition to rewarding loyal Muslim businessmen, whatever their ethnic ties, Beijing is also bent on punishing those — such as Rebiya Kadeer — who refuse to cooperate. Once hailed by Beijing as a model citizen, and the richest woman in East Turkestan, the 54-year-old owner of a business venture valued at $10 million is now serving an 8-year prison-sentence. She was convicted last March after a farcical two-hour trial. Her ‘crime’ was that she refused to pay bribes to Han Chinese officials or to issue a public statement condemning her husband, Sidi Rouzi, as a traitor for seeking political asylum in the US.

According to Islamic activists quoted in newspaper reports, Kadeer is also being punished for using her money to build a school for Muslim children which the authorities said was secretly engaged in spreading Islam. The activists said that Muslim businessmen were expected to help only Han Chinese. Kadeer’s son, Aleem, is now running the business, which is estimated to have lost half of its value.

Beijing is now hoping that, by terrorising East Turkestanis who will not toe the official line, and by promising to develop the entire region to the level of eastern China, it will persuade most people to side with it against the separatists. But the Chinese government has often made similar promisesin the past, and there is no apparent reason for Muslims to believe it now. In any case, the measures being taken to implement the ‘development’ plan are too obviously designed to enthrone the Han Chinese, and to disinherit Muslims, to take anyone in.